A flourishing life is an integrated life

The wellbeing community speak of a flourishing life.

Flourishing implies more than being happy it includes the idea of living in a way that involves healthy thought and action, in mind, body and spirit.  The rewards of a full and flourishing life are happiness and wellbeing.

The most interesting and relevant research findings into what contributes to a flourishing life tell us the importance of:

Feeling good, being grateful, being curious and open minded, acting generously, choosing wisely, living meaningfully, having self-acceptance and being sociable.

Research into this subject appears to be confirming old ideas about character and living a ‘good’ life. All traditional stories that teach us about this subject however, are clothed in metaphor or tale, being a ‘good’ person gets rewarded and attending to character traits that endear you to others is the key to a ‘good’ life and reward. Positive psychology has collided with moral philosophy and spiritual practices and the reward is wellbeing and happiness.

All stories are really about good character and the courage to learn and face challenges. This is in essence at the core of every Hollywood story and the ‘reward’ is as likely to be happiness through personal fulfilment and self-discovery as material gain. The guy gets the girl because he wins himself first (or vice versa).

The stuff of tales - courage, generosity, wisdom, and honour depends on self-knowledge and belief combined with the ability to look beyond the self, to the needs of others. Stop for a moment and think about what in your life has given you the most lasting sense of well-being – when you felt truly yourself, a moment or event that caused you to feel great long afterwards. I bet it either affected other people or was something that involved a challenge.

Altruism is not self-denial it is the employment of empathy and imagination. When combined with that horrible word responsibility, we own up to the fact that our lives are not separate but intricately interdependent and our actions matter.

A flourishing live is an integrated life, living a life that is both fulfilling to yourself as well as those around you and beyond. A flourishing life can begin with a smile and always has a story to tell.

The small and the complex

If you google happiness, well being or positive psychology you will quickly discover the main  subjects and research. The importance of gratitude, meaning, optimism, resilience, kindness, developing your strengths, and finding what you value. You will also hopefully find that variety is important and that exercise and mindful living are as beneficial to the mind as to the body.

Most of what is written on the subject is limited and simplistic and at its heart a 'good' life is not complicated - but it is complex.

There isn’t just one contributing key to a happier, more fulfilled life. Nothing is simple and yet everything is simple, because changing just one small aspect in your life affects something else which in turn has an effect.

The scientist Stephen Wolfram shows very neatly how complexity can arise from the very simple when randomness is one of the factors fed into the most basic computer program. This is not what is interesting; his main point is that it is not always possible to retrieve the simple beginning from the complex or to predict the outcome when randomness is a feature. In a very simple example he creates beautiful and complex patterns from running very basic programs.

In some ways it could be said that positive psychology is attempting to find the code, the initial programme that  produce the most beautiful lives. Philosophers and mystics have attempted similar journeys and come to very similar conclusions. There is no surprise at how much research findings are mirroring some of the teachings of ancient mystics and philosophers. However, it should be remembered that all ancient writings on the practices and behaviours of those who have embodied what has been recognised as the height of human flourishing were written by followers in their name. Buddha, Jesus and Socrates wrote nothing. Their ‘teaching’ was given in practice and through stories and principles that call for reflective action in relationship to the self and others; the best understanding of these teachings is only really revealed in practice.

Being judgmental and the misery of social comparison

Why are we often so judgemental?

The psychologist Jonathan Haidt says it is because this is part of the essential glue that holds us socially cohesive. He argues that ‘tit for tat’, or ‘do as you would be done by’, is the most successful way we have to work as an individual within a group; policing, or monitoring, this tension works through our common public judgement of each other. Because we assess and judge people, we hold them accountable and are in turn held accountable. We are constantly judging who is deserving of what reward or punishment, and we are naturally programmed to reciprocate like for like.

In his book Women are from Mars, Men are from Venus, John Gray talks about how we are doing this in relationships all the time, subconsciously awarding points to ourselves and our partner and we judge others through our own award system.

There are many different award systems associated to gender, personality, class, culture, age, and most especially beliefs and values. What you believe, what you most value, reflects and governs how you make sense of the world and therefore affects your judgement and can govern your emotions. We feel the world through what we value and we judge others through this veil of emotion. brilliant

Answer the following questions with a score of 1–10 to get an idea of how much you judge people.

• How much do you feel let down by people?
• How much do you criticise?
• How much does it matter to you to be acknowledged?
• How much do you believe only some people are worth spending time with?
• How much do you look for praise?

Judging other people is one thing, judging yourself in reference to others is a first-class ticket to unhappiness.

• How much do you worry about how much fun or success other people are having compared to yourself?
• How much do you want other people to think you have an interesting or exciting life?

The new charity Action for Happiness  http://www.actionforhappiness.org/ has a wonderful poster that says it very neatly.

 

Notice if you are constantly evaluating yourself in respect to other people. Your social support is part of who you are and those around you can have a great influence on how you feel about yourself. Being dependent on the opinions of others affects your own self-regard which is then fed back into your relationships with other people.  

Comparing ourselves and judging others is only bad when it is done negatively or makes us feel bad. We all need to feel we belong and we all love to belong to a ‘tribe’ we identify with, who share similar outlooks, pleasures and activities. Belonging to a football club, church community, sharing a school or geography, life experience or social class is part of who we are, and people who share these things with us share a part of our identity and make us feel we belong and are connected.

What is your identity?

Wanting to have another identity from the one we ‘think’ we have is different from growing and developing an identity that is authentic and comfortable;  that incorporates who we have been into who we are and who we can be. Comparing yourself to others in a way that becomes unhealthy can develop from a belief that your identity comes only from external expression;- who we want to be seen to be by others. This can lead to a life of constant neediness and judgement.

Here are three ways to become less judgemental.

Be authentic rather than sincere

We are increasingly identified by our sincerity of belief, which is rewarded by outside approval of our adherence to the 'popular' or ‘right’ way to think or behave. You can be high-minded and sincerely so, but to be authentic you must also be rooted in reality, which can require restraint, compromise, and full responsibility to both yourself and other people.

·         Who are you when you are being sincere?

·         Who are you when you are being authentic?

·         How is this different?

Develop your self-regard.

Develop your self-regard through acceptance, love, curiosity, gratitude and fun. Learn to be and celebrate ALL that you are, your weaknesses and your strengths, and you will find yourself enjoying all your relationships better, especially with yourself.

Learning self-acceptance is part of growing your self-regard, the best way to reduce the misery of social comparison and being too judgmental.

Make friends who share your values

Choosing relationships and friends that complement rather than compete with your own abilities and strengths stops you being competitive and envious. Choosing partners and friends who have qualities and strengths you can admire and celebrate encourages reciprocal respect and admiration.

Curiosity- a key ingredient to wellbeing

Are you open and curious or do you hold on to rigid expectations.?

Being open to new (and old) experiences and open to continuous learning, having a growth as opposed to a fixed mind-set, has a great effect on every aspect of your happiness and well-being.

Research is showing that having a growth mind-set rather than being fixed in how we see the world is an important distinction between people who thrive and those who don’t.

People with a growth mind-set never stop learning.

Your ability to adapt and learn is a key component of your happiness and well-being.

We all face challenges and change, and having an attitude that embraces personal growth happens when we are willing to learn. Setbacks and failure are opportunities to improve and grow. People with a growth mind-set love challenges and new experiences.

Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new.

Albert Einstein,1879–1955

According to the psychologist Carol Dweck someone with a growth mind-set:

·         Is open to new ideas.

·         Enjoys challenges.

·         Believes that abilities develop.

·         Believes that lives and relationships and other people develop.

·         Work at relationships.

·         Is always learning (especially from setbacks)

Whereas people with a fixed mind-set:

·         Believe that ability and intelligence are innate.

·         Are Judgemental.

·         Limit their achievement (crumbles in the face of challenge and adversity). 

·         Believe that that if they have to work at things they must be stupid – it should come naturally.

·         Believe that if relationships need work they must be wrong

How can you become more curious? Curiosity does more than broaden your mind; curiosity is a significant factor in well-being. Research has proved that the more curious we are the happier we are, both in our pleasure and joy in the moment and in our general well-being. The psychologist Todd Kashdan calls curiosity the ‘engine of wellbeing’. Knowing who you are, what you enjoy, how your life can be better, safer, happier or easier is the beginning of making it so. The more curious you are the bigger your world gets, and your knowledge of yourself, others and the world deepens.

Anxiety can be cured with curiosity. Next time you feel anxious you may notice that it is because there is something you don’t know, so why not:

·         Get curious about why you are anxious.

·         Find out what you need to do.

·         Say you don’t understand.

The more open you are to new ideas and perspectives the more you will be able to affect your happiness and well-being.

Why no decide today be open and curious to any and all possibilities and to let go

of any attachment to specific outcomes.

Dweck, C. (2008). Mindset: The new psychology of success – how we

can learn to fulfil our potential. New York: Ballantine Books.

Choice

“Today I choose life. Every morning when I wake up I can choose joy, happiness, negativity, pain... To feel the freedom that comes from being able to continue to make mistakes and choices - today I choose to feel life, not to deny my humanity but embrace it.” Kevyn Aucoin



What are you choosing? More importantly how and why are choosing how you choose to think and act?

This sounds either mindless or confusing but whenever I get my clients to start to think about the reasons and motivation behind their actions it is always challenging.

We choose differently in different areas of our lives and as we go through life the choices that suited us in our youth are different to those as we get older and at every life change.

In my last blog I touched on the accumulated affect of all the little things. We change and our circumstances change in some ways so gradually and surreptitiously that perhaps we don't notice and if we don't notice we can get 'out of date' with our own life. Sometimes we can even forget to choose fun!

One of the ways we choose is our time perspective.

The psychologist Philip Zimbardo writes and talks about the importance of choosing our time perspective and how our happiness and well being is affected by how much (and in what way) we choose to focus on the past, present and future. You can see him talking about this at http://ted.com/talk/lang/eng/philip_zimbardo_prescribes_a_healthy_take_on_time.html
Zimbardo's conclusion is that he used to be too future orientated (choosing how he lived only in respect to future outcomes) and that he is now much more present focused and consequently much happier. He is making an important point that to be too future orientated is not good for your health and wellbeing. His professional achievements, that he now enjoys, came directly as a result of his choice to be single mindedly future focused but he woke up to the cost of his choice (which I believe has much more to do with his age than his research) and wishes he had done so sooner now he has discovered the joy of choosing to live in the present. -Zimbardo's message is that just choosing one focus and perspective, however successful, can come at a price.

Our choices are often in competition and can be affected by hidden - or at least unacknowledged, motivations. When this happens we can feel out of control.

In my book Brilliant Positive Psychology I have started with the power of choice because we are actually choosing everything- not just our time perspective. We are making many many choices -much more that we realise- in fact happiness itself is a choice. By taking a moment to examine what we are choosing (and why) we can begin to evaluate and change our perspective in all areas of life. How we choose to see other people and events, how we choose to see ourselves, and how and what we choose to do what we do. Choosing to choose can be very empowering.

The choices I am talking about are not what to buy, eat or get, but how we choose to think and what we choose to value. In fact one of the best choices you can make for your happiness and wellbeing is to do and have less! Research has told us that having too much choice and always trying to get the most from everything doesn't make us feel good.

In order to change how you think you first have to choose to think!

This is an extract from Brilliant Positive Psychology p.11

Below are some of the ways you are choosing your experience
and well-being; these are some of the factors that govern how
and why you make choices, and, in effect, how you choose to
think and feel. All these influences are part of your complexity
and only you can change or increase what influences your
choices.
1 What you need and value. You choose what you need.
Your basic needs are as individual as you are and what
you need are the things that matter most to you, what you
value.

2 As a response. You choose your response to how others
behave and act, and to outside circumstances. Someone
else’s actions affect your choices. This is often an emotional response

3 To conform as part of a group. You choose because it
is socially appropriate. You choose to do things you feel
you should do because it is considered by others to be the
choice you should make. You choose cultural and social
norms.

4 With autonomy. You choose completely freely and
unrestrained. You choose novelty, excitement and
uncertainty, for your immediate pleasure.

5 With your mind. You choose to do something logically
because it makes sense to you.

6 As a habit. You choose out of habit. You choose
mindlessly, doing what you have always done without
thinking about it.

7 With understanding. You choose what you understand
and is meaningful to you. When you understand why you
want to do something, you have a reason to choose it.

What are you choosing right now?
Are you awake and open to change?
Are you content and grateful for how much you have or do you
want more?
Are you living ‘your’ life or for someone else and have you chosen this?
Are you choosing to see problems or solutions?
Are you learning from your mistakes or do you feel a failure?
Are you looking forward to the future or does the past hold you in
its grip?
Are you choosing safety or adventure?
Are you choosing to be generous with your gifts or do you hold the
best of you only for those who deserve it?
Are you choosing to judge yourself and others or are you choosing
to see the best in yourself and others?

Why not choose to become more aware of the choices you are making today, especially in respect to time.
Look at different areas of your life in the list below and put each area in the middle of the mind map and play with some of the perspectives. Note down which perspective you are choosing and then note down what you might choose from a different perspective.

1. How or what are you choosing in your career, at work, professionally.



2. How or what are you choosing to spend your time recreationally, for fun, in your social life.



3. How or what are you choosing in respect to your romantic life, significant other.



4. What are you choosing in respect to where you live, your environment.



5. What or how are you choosing financially, to keep yourself and others.



6. How or what are you choosing for yourself, your soul.



7. How or what are you choosing for others, the wider world.

Do let me know if you choose something different and if it changed anything

The power of the ironic loop

Try this. I want you NOT to think about a lemon barley sweet. Don’t think about sucking lemon barley for the next two minutes. How is this working?

The mind plays an ironic trick: when we have the thought that we mustn’t think about something it sets up a feedback loop that increases, rather than diminishes, this thing we mustn’t think about in our minds.

Were you able not to think of a lemon barley and did your mouth water by any chance? When we ruminate on something negative or want to stop doing something that is hard, like dieting or smoking, or even when we just feel miserable and want to stop feeling this way, we can set up such a loop.

It is very hard to overcome strong emotion, which can then govern what we think; yet paradoxically what we 'think', may have elicited the strong emotion. Just choosing not to think of the things that make us feel negative may in fact increase those thoughts and feelings, as the above example with the lemon barley sweet shows.

Whatever it is that you want to stop doing or deny yourself try not to be too obsessed.  Acknowledge your cravings/worry/hatred and see the gremlin on your shoulder who is making such a big deal - and then find something to distract you. Chances are that if you embrace your worries and fears; notice and stay with the emotion, it will probably loose some of its grip.  Denying the emotion or fighting it, is the fuel to feeling it more strongly.

One way to break the ironic loop is to name the emotion. 'Hi desire', 'hi fear', 'hi anger' so this is what you feel like.   I am feeling you and  I notice your grip, but you will pass in a while. Then focus on something different and positive. Good luck

Celebrating

This is my first post.
What do I write about?
My oldest daughters happy happy wedding three weeks ago.
My youngest daughters twenty first four months ago.
The publication of my book six months ago - Brilliant Positive Psychology- and the party I had to celebrate it one month ago.
Being married for 30 years, three months ago.
Becoming 50 seven months ago.
The courageous and tragic death of Bunty aged 36 and the wisdom and strength of Ned her son aged six, four months ago.
The last two books I read on holiday- The Junior Officers Reading Club and One Day, one week ago.
The launch of action for happiness two weeks ago.
Consciousness.
The joy of friendship.
The love of family in both grief and joy.
The importance of sisters and sisterhood.
The cost of gardening and sailing - the pleasure of gardening and sailing.
Wisdom and common sense.
Living through the biggest change since the reformation or the fall of Rome ......................... What really matters to me enough to write about it today?
All the above have filled and over filled the last seven months of my life and looking at the above list I think I must focus on the unusual number of celebratory events.

In the last seven months we have had three tents for celebration, the local marquee company in the village thinks our life is one long round of celebration but we have never had a tent in the garden before this year! We also watched, and supported as best we could, my husbands niece die of secondary cancer leaving her sister to bring up her son alongside her own three small children and nothing I could write about that would be adequate except to say her funeral was a perfect celebration and recognition of her unique life.

Life is the measure of the small, shaping and giving strength to the large. When we make the small things good, the big good things are better and the big bad things more bearable. Celebrating and marking the big events in life matters, but it is noticeable how much the big celebrations are an amplification of all the little things.

Relationships are built on numberless small kindnesses and shared moments. Each moment spent well, authentically and generously, whether laughing or crying, listening or sharing, each small intimacy becomes another drop in a pool of love and friendship. What has marked the last seven months for me has been the incredible joy of swimming in the lake that is the sum of all these pools.

Each event was very different, and each lake unique to the event. However each event was without doubt a reflection and celebration of love and friendship, new and old, all valuable and authentic.

The country's celebration on Friday was a wonderful example of swimming in all the good things. A mass celebration of the joy of young love and the hope invested at the start of a marriage. It was a celebration of a national identity, built over time as a nation represented in the pomp and splendor or individually in each person comming together to share in public celebration and joy.

Celebrating is one of the many ingredients of a happy life and as with everything that contributes to a happy life,when combined with other positive ingredients, such as generosity, kindness, recognition, gratitude and meaning (to name a few) it becomes more potent.

I included celebration in the 5th chapter in my book, the chapter on positive relationships, a small paragraph on page 120, on how to positively celebrate someone else's achievement. I am still learning and wish now I had written more but then there are so very many ways to build wellbeing and happiness......................This is that small paragraph; Celebrating and sharing good things is a very important aspect of positive relationships. Sharing good things can be done well and encourage trust and intimacy. We all know how good it feels when someone says well done, but it can feel even better when the ‘well done’ is well done!
Being positive and supportive involves responding to good news in a genuine constructive reaction that actively acknowledges the other and celebrates the event with them. Psychologist Shelly Gable has shown that this is vital to the health and well-being of all relationships but particularly builds intimacy and trust. Do’s and don’ts of positive celebrating. DO
Be genuine, and excited
Mark the moment
Be fully attentive and interested in all the details
Really enjoy your friend’s or partner’s achievement
Set your own needs aside.

DON'T
Talk about yourself and your achievements

Look for bad consequences or pour cold water on it: ‘that’s great but how will you cope . . afford it. . . etc.?’
Immediately change the subject or the focus of your attention
Ignore the news or event. Whatever you are doing today, if you are doing it with someone else, know that however small the kindness or shared joke or small attention you give or receive is adding to a pool of shared moments that will be part of who you are when in celebration together, yours or their celebration. Have you or someone you love a reason for celebration? If so start making the plans